Craving or Addiction:
Medical and scientific communities in the US agree that nicotine is addictive. Nicotine meets both the psychological and physiological measures of addiction:
Psychological—people who are addicted to something will use it compulsively, without regard for its negative effects on their health or life. A good example would be someone who continues to smoke, even as they use an oxygen tank to breathe because of the damage smoking has done to their lungs.
Physiological—neuroscientists call anything that turns on the reward pathway in the brain addictive. Because stimulating this neural circuitry makes you so good, you will continue to do it again and again to get those feelings back.
When smokers abruptly stop smoking—the body cannot function the same way in the absence of the drug as it did before, the physiological effects for nicotine remain, at least in the short term. They will experience: Irritability, anxiety, depression and craving for nicotine.
Over a period these symptoms and physiological changes subside. It is in this period alternative methods of nicotine delivery is essential in order to succeed quitting smoking.
Nicotine:
Nicotine normally makes up about 5% of a tobacco plant, by weight. Cigarettes contain 8-20 mg of nicotine depending on the brand, but only approximately 1 mg is actually absorbed by your body when you smoke a cigarette.
Nicotine's effects are short-lived, lasting only 40 minutes to a couple of hours. This leads people to smoke tobacco periodically throughout the day to dose themselves with nicotine. Within 10-15 seconds of inhaling, most smokers are in the throes of nicotine's effects.
Different approaches may be made in order to counteract craving related to absence of nicotine in the blood.
Many pharmacotherapies have been developed or explored for aiding smokers to cease smoking. The predominant one is nicotine replacement therapies. Nicotine replacement therapies involve the administration of nicotine through suitable delivery systems. Nicotine replacement products available on the market include nicotine transdermal patches, inhalators, nicotine nasal spray or nicotine chewing gum. These types of products, like cigarettes, deliver nicotine to the blood via diffusion of nicotine through the skin or the mucous membrane.
Nicotine transdermal patches release nicotine into the bloodstream through the skin. A patch is applied each day to a different area of dry, clean, non-hairy skin and left as long as recommended on the product labelling—typically the non-sleeping hours of a day. Using the product generates a constant low concentration of nicotine to the blood over the period applied.
Nicotine nasal spray is inhaled into the person's nose from a pump bottle and absorbed through the nasal lining into the bloodstream. This form of nicotine delivery system generates a fast increase of nicotine concentration in the blood—almost as fast as the cigarette.
Nicotine inhalator enters the user's mouth through a mouthpiece attached to a plastic cartridge. Although the product is called an “inhaler”, it does not deliver nicotine to the lungs the way a cigarette does. Almost all of the nicotine travels only as far as the mouth and throat, where it is absorbed through the mucous membrane.
Nicotine chewing gum releases nicotine into the bloodstream through the lining of the mouth, i.e. the mucous membrane. Unlike gum chewed for pleasure, nicotine gum requires a measured routine—it is chewed slowly until a slight tingling occurs or a peppery taste comes out, then it is placed between the check and gum until the taste or tingling is almost gone. The cycle is typically repeated for about 30 minutes per gum. Products available slowly build up the nicotine blood concentration over the first 10-15 minutes of chewing.
The present invention relates to counteracting of craving by means of nicotine holding chewing gum.
Counteracting of craving by means of nicotine holding chewing gum as such is well-known within the art.
Basically two different paths have been followed in the prior art, alone or in combination.
The original approach was to incorporate nicotine in chewing gum and then match the release of chewing gum with the overall total desired release of nicotine over the entire chewing period. Typically, such an approach involves considerations with respect to the release of nicotine over a day compared to one or several different smoking patterns.
A further attempt to improve the counteracting of craving by means of chewing gum is to incorporate nicotine in e.g. the coat of a coated chewing gum. Such an approach may be referred to as biphasic within the art, i.e. the approach of providing an initial significant dose of nicotine immediately after chewing of a chewing gum has been initiated and then subsequently, providing a second long term dose subsequently. Such subsequent dose is also referred to as maintenance dose may e.g. last from about 10 minutes to 30 minutes of the chewing process.
A problem related to the prior art is however that some users of the chewing gum may dislike especially the initial dose and that the subsequent dose typically mismatches the expectations of the user with respect to relieving of nicotine related craving.
It is the object of the invention to obtain a chewing gum, which may be applied for an effective and user-acceptable counteracting of craving not only after use but also during use.